If you really wanted to lose friends, alienate supporters and eliminate any hope of sympathy for your cause, I can’t think of a better way to do it than to close down traffic on a busy highway on Mothers Day.

Just who exactly is advising Toronto’s Tamils on their strategy for attracting support for their cause? When they marched onto the Gardiner Expressway on Sunday evening, shutting traffic in both directions until after midnight, they did so without notifying police or allowing any preparations to be made.

They dragged their kids with them, created a dangerous situation and disrupted the lives of countless people who had nothing to do with the Tamils and the problems in their homeland. If they thought that the protest would help gain Canada’s sympathy, they have some learning to do. If anything, they likely guaranteed the police and the public have less tolerance than ever for a community that seems to have no sense of Canadian values, and no particular interest in the rights of anyone but themselves.